Home | Databases | WorldLII | Search | Feedback Edited Legal Collections Data

Mestmäcker, Ernst-Joachim --- "The Development of German and European Competition Law with Special Reference to the EU Commission’s Article 82 Guidance of 2008" [2011] ELECD 292; in Pace, Federico Lorenzo (ed), "European Competition Law: The Impact of the Commission’s Guidance on Article 102" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011)

Book Title: European Competition Law: The Impact of the Commission’s Guidance on Article 102

Editor(s): Pace, Federico Lorenzo

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781848447738

Section: Chapter 3

Section Title: The Development of German and European Competition Law with Special Reference to the EU Commission’s Article 82 Guidance of 2008

Author(s): Mestmäcker, Ernst-Joachim

Number of pages: 38

Extract:

3. The development of German
and European competition law
with special reference to the EU
Commission's Article 82 Guidance
of 2008
Ernst-Joachim Mestmäcker

1 COMPETITION AND THE SELF-REGULATION OF
SELF-INTEREST

The former President of the United States Federal Reserve, Alan
Greenspan, told Congress that the experience of the financial crisis shat-
tered his confidence in the self-regulating power of self-interest. For him
the failure of self-interest to provide self-regulation was a `flaw in the
model that I perceived as the critical functioning structure that defines
how the world works'.1 Part of that functional structure is, of course, com-
petition. Robert H. Bork, summarising the major tenets of the Chicago
School of Antitrust, agreed in principle with Greenspan's pre-crisis belief.
I quote: `The closer members of an industry come to maximising their
profits the closer they come to maximising the welfare of consumers.'2 We
are reminded of Mandeville's fable of the bees.3 Vices such as self-interest,
fraud, avarice and bribery are miraculously turned into virtues: `Even the
worst of the multitude did something for the common good.'
Self-interest and profit maximisation are driving forces of competition.
Their salutary effect is, however, dependent on a legal framework that
facilitates commerce and simultaneously limits the potentially destructive
forces of self-interest and the love of power. The legal framework has to


1 New Yorker, February 2, 2009.
2 The Antitrust Paradox: A Policy at War with ...